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As part of his EYEBEAM residency in NYC, Aram Bartholl created "Dead Drops," an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space where USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space.

This is an interesting project that is the intersection of street art and technology, using public space as a way to communicate in a specific way with others.

If you're walking around bustling New York City, it's probably not with an open laptop. But if you were... you might notice the five USB flash drives that Aram Bartholl installed into walls and columns around the city. The small ports wait for someone to walk by, plug in a laptop, and drop off or pick up some files.

In a year that has given us Facebook Friendship Pages, there’s no end to creatively (and creepily) sharing your personal information through your computer anymore. And with his new project “Dead Drops,” German digital artist Aram Bartholl is making sure no New Yorker can escape the urge to participate. No wi-fi necessary.

... In the meantime, this isn’t only digital art in the city recently — “Dead Drops” is part of a larger “X-Lab” campaign by Eyebeam, the popular non-profit art and technology center in Chelsea, intended to involve the public in creative ways. You can follow other “X-Lab” projects on the Eyebeam tumblr here.

As part of his residency at Eyebeam, Aram Bartholl sealed five USB flash drives into the walls of several New York City buildings, such as the New Museum, Eyebeam and the Union Square subway station, allowing anyone with a laptop to plug in and share whatever they want. "'Dead Drops' is an anonymous, offline, peer-to-peer file-sharing network in public space," writes Bartholl on his site.

We can't imagine that they'll last too long, though, before getting filled up with illicit porn, indie band demo albums and terrible poetry. Check out the full list of the drives' locations at Bartholl's site.

By Sean Hollister posted Oct 30th 2010 9:19PM Back when the walls had ears, spies would store their information in a hidden cache and pass along the location via code. Now, a New York City artist is doing the same with USB flash drives, five of which he's already injected into the city's brick walls. While there some obvious logistical reasons we'd avoid using his creation (not to mention worries about AutoRun in older PCs) we'll definitely keep the idea in mind for Engadget informants who are particularly paranoid about their anonymity. See the first five drives' not-so-secret locations in photos at our source links.

Aram Bartholl, also known as the man behind Speed Show, has launched a new project in New York City which is part of his Eyebeam residency. Under the name of ‘Dead Drops’, he created an anomymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space by ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into publicly accessible walls, buildings and curbs.

What would you do if you saw a USB head sticking out of a wall? Dead Drops is a new offline peer-to-peer file sharing project by Aram Bartholl. Anonymous users can find the USB flashdrives in public spaces (5 so far in NYC) and download and share files. Take that Limewire!